The 4 Worst Famous Relatives People Managed to Live Down

Every family has its black sheep, but some families have a cousin who molests that sheep while threatening the police with a katana. Still, relatives often support their maniac because blood is thick, and people are even thicker. Don't get me wrong -- standing by your family is noble. Defending them when they have clearly molested kids ... maybe not as much?

So it's OK to renounce an irredeemable relative. Life's hard enough without a bad guy ruining your name, and nobody should be held accountable for their relatives' actions. You wouldn't want the FBI arresting you because your mom murdered those gigolos, and I don't want my brother footing the bill for this golf course I'm about to joyride in an ATV. Here are some people who faced up to a painful reality and disclaimed their own blood.

#4. Lana Peters

Who She Was

This Wisconsin resident was primarily brought up by her nanny and seldom saw her high-ranking father. But if she had, she might have seen him order the deaths of 10 million people.

Born Svetlana Alliluyeva, Peters was the beloved daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who you can tell was evil because he was foreign. Also, nobody grows a mustache that luxurious without spilling some blood.

We stole this from Russia. Now THAT's Communism!"Tickle torture" had an entirely different meaning with Papa Joe.

The Relative

Ioseb Besarionis dze Dzhugashvili was born in Georgia, the fourth son of a cobbler and the only one to survive childhood, possibly because when Death approached his crib, he exiled it to Siberia. After his Myers-Briggs test showed that he would grow bored with cobbling's low murder rate, he turned to the seminary, but, like other Sith Lords, abandoned the monastic life for one of crime. Here's everything you need to know about his personality: His style of Marxism was robbery, and his method of robbery was detonating bombs in marketplaces. He was probably also a snitch to the police, because really, what crime is beneath Joseph "Man of Steel" Stalin?

Russia. Just Russia.Man, he went from brat in a Roald Dahl novel to goddamn cologne model like: boom! Communism.

For a pox-scarred, gimp-armed, four-toed priest, Stalin was quite the murdernaut. At 5 feet 6 inches (or 1.68 meters, if you use that commie metric system), he's proof that short guys spend their free time dreaming of ways to punish the world. Even growing a mustache thicker than an Italian woman's pubes didn't soothe Stalin's ego. He thug-lifed his way to power and erased more people in his lifetime than most nations kill in their entire history. If Joseph Stalin had an action figure, its right hand would have a realistic Death-Warrant-Signing Grip.

The conservative estimate is that Stalin's regime slaughtered 3 million of his own comrades, but possibly as many as 10 million, which is enough blood to paint half of Rhode Island. You can add another 3.5 million if you blame him for the Ukrainian famines. Oh, and all the purges as the Red Army marched west to fight Germany in World War II. Basically, Stalin killed so many people, there is an eight-figure margin of error.

Sure, it's easy to condemn a man just because he's the most ice-blooded monster the world has ever shuddered to behold, but by God, you have to admire anyone who's that good at his job. You do if you believe in God, I mean. You probably don't if you're a communist, or someone who looked at what Stalin did to the communists.

The Renunciation

Even though Stalin had died a decade earlier, Peters was never allowed to officially marry her third husband, Indian Communist Brajesh Singh. When he too died, she traveled to India, found spirituality, and decided to reboot her existence. Like most women who do that, she wrote her memoirs. But hers were better than Elizabeth Gilbert's because there was a bloodthirsty dictator in them.

You had this coming, Columbia PicturesBut the final title was Twenty Letters to a Friend.

The United States welcomed her defection and held a press conference so she could explain how depressing Soviet life was, even for the General Secretary of Murder's daughter. She took the more Anglican name of Lana Peters and got down to capitalizing.

After a fitfully weird U.S. residence, she returned to the Soviet Union, and all of America's political points reverted to Russia. But after two years, Peters came back to the USA -- apparently just to prove that no Iron Curtain could hold the Daughter of Steel.

Later in life, Peters described her dad as a "very simple man. Very rude. Very cruel." She said he loved her, but that "He broke my life," which is something most girls say as teenagers -- usually because they get grounded, but sometimes because Daddy sends their first love to a labor camp.

Troublemaker1949/WIkipediai
Here are some Russians who apparently never heard that Stalin killed 10 million of themselves.

Despite being the first person in history to convene a government press conference just to call her dad a dick, strangers associated Peters with her father's sins throughout her life. She died in 2011, having finally found some peace in Wisconsin -- which is more than Packers fans can say.

#3. William Patrick Stuart-Houston

Who He Was

William Patrick Stuart-Houston was a U.S. Navy pharmacist's mate in World War II who was wounded in service to his country. He had grown up in Liverpool before going to live with his father in Germany, where he worked various jobs for the next decade. Willy returned to England in 1939, because unlike his half-brother, Heinz, Willy didn't want to be a Nazi. He was visiting the U.S. when World War II premiered to huge ratings in Europe and found himself stranded stateside.

After receiving a special dispensation from FDR, the expat was cleared to enlist and fight the Ratzis on America's behalf. The story goes that his draft officer was named Hess, the same as Germany's deputy fuhrer at the time -- which is pretty funny, considering that Willy Hitler was Adolf's nephew.

Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty ImagesHa! You thought this would be about Heinz.

The Relative

What can be said about Adolf Hitler that hasn't been said already? Certainly not that he was a gentle lover. This is a man who had six girlfriends in his life, and four of them took up suicide as a hobby. He probably kept his watch on during sex and blamed his arrhythmic thrusting on her not lying still enough.

Adolf Hitler was the fourth son of Alois Hitler Sr. and Klara Polzl, and the first one to survive past infancy. He pondered the priesthood before -- holy crow, that's exactly what happened to Stalin. Was Hitler's dad a dick, too? Let's ask a Victorian street urchin:

Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
Wine for breakfast and anger for lunch -- that was life in the Hitler household.

The Adventures of Teen Hitler featured the character moving to Vienna, where he excelled at not getting into art school. A spinoff series, Hitler at War, cast the oddball in the Bavarian Army, where he got into comic mishaps like inhaling mustard gas and taking explosives to the groin.

German Fed. Archives: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1974-082-44You know you're a schmuck when dogs try not to be photographed with you.

Hitler spent the years between the wars like your typical demagogue, shrieking about conspiracies and people who looked different. All that changed with the Beer Hall Putsch, in which the cantankerous twerp led 600 Nazi stormtroopers into the Burgerbraukeller -- which sounds like a delicious dinner combo at T.G.I. Fascism's, but was actually a political meeting/drinking ground.

Germany's government at the time was the Weimar Republic, and it was not taking care of business every day -- meaning the trains did not run on time and Germans could not get to work by nine, as noted by German historians Bachman-Turner Ubersteuern. Hitler planned to change all that (especially the trains) by inciting a fascist revolution that would pour into Berlin and overthrow the government, because Jews or something.

At Burgerbraukeller, Hitler took the stage to talk 3,000 scared and angry drunks into supporting his crazypants ideas -- and it worked. If Hitler had had a sense of humor, he would have been the most successful stand-up comedian ever.

Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty ImagesAlthough he still killed the audience.

Despite Hitler's devilish hypnotic powers, the putsch failed and he went to prison for a year. You have to wonder if somewhere in the 1950s there was a German ex-con scoring free drinks after he became known as "That Guy Who Raped Hitler Right Off the Calendar."

Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
Rape is funny when it happens to Hitler.

Hitler went on to have some pretty crazy times, you guys. Like when he imprisoned (and blitzkrieged?) his niece till she committed suicide. Or when he ran for president after doing time for high treason and almost won, because shit-hearted people are everywhere. The rest you pretty much know.

The Renunciation

Around the time Hitler was inventing high-ranking unelected positions for himself, nephew Willy came back to Germany to soak in the reflected glory. Chancellor Hitler got him a couple of nice jobs, but Willy wanted more, and had the audacity to blackmail Uncle Krazy von Powergrab.

That's when Adolf started calling Willy "my loathsome nephew," which translates from Hitler as quite a compliment. The Fuhrer told Willy he could have a great job if he renounced his British citizenship. His nephew responded by upping the blackmail ante and threatening to proclaim the family's Jewish lineage, writing a magazine article called "Why I Hate My Uncle," and then going back to Germany anyway. Jeez, the Nazis goose-stepped because they were trained to, but Willy did it to avoid stepping on his own colossal balls.

This would be a good place to mention that Willy might have been a British secret agent all this time, trying to get closer to Hitler to learn juicy secrets. Or just, as history sometimes paints him, an opportunistic nepotist. Either's fine. If you want to blackmail Hitler, you don't need to explain your motives to me.

Willy lived out his days on Long Island running a blood lab. Heinz Hitler was captured by the Soviets and tortured to death, because Ivan don't play.